Classification: Official

To:

• trusts and integrated care boards (ICBs):
  • chief executive officers
  • chief nurses
  • medical directors
  • communications directors

cc:

• trusts and ICBs:
  • chairs
  • medical directors
  • clinical directors
  • chief people officers
  • heads of midwifery
• Allied health professions leads

Dear colleagues,

For urgent action: campaign to vaccinate all frontline healthcare staff

Earlier this year we published the Urgent and emergency care plan 2025/26. The plan is a bold commitment to action backed by NHS leaders at all levels, practical resources and a shared determination to do everything in our power to make winter 2025/26 significantly better than in recent years.

An essential pillar of the plan is an ambitious, but achievable, target to substantially improve our rates of staff vaccination. This is why we are writing to you today.

Flu vaccination is one of the best tools we have to protect the health of our patients and staff, easing winter pressures and reducing the risk of avoidable disruption to our services.

Last winter in England, there were 7,757 deaths from flu with 340,000 bed days taken up by flu patients. The vaccine is estimated to have prevented between 96,000 and 120,200 people from being hospitalised.

Yet the uptake of staff vaccination has declined steadily year on year – falling from 74% in 2019/20 to just 37.8% in 2024/25.

Low uptake is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Last year, our best performing trusts vaccinated about two thirds of their staff, compared to around 1 in 8 in those with the lowest rates of vaccination.

This year, in line with advice to government from the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, COVID-19 will not be part of our frontline healthcare staff vaccination offer, allowing us to focus our full efforts on the flu campaign.

Clearly, we have a huge opportunity to reverse declining rates of vaccination and get on the right track ahead of winter. As leaders, we must seize this opportunity for the benefit of our colleagues and patients.

The staff flu vaccination campaign is a national priority and needs leadership from the top. All trusts should aim to improve uptake by at least 5 percentage points compared to last year’s position. Uptake will be monitored using trust level data reported in the Federated Data Platform.

Every trust should have a named executive lead (or leads) with responsibility for winter preparedness and staff vaccination, ensuring there is an accessible, convenient vaccination offer available to all staff from Wednesday 1 October to Tuesday 31 March. It is clearly of greater benefit to staff and patients that the vaccinations are made available to staff as early as possible during this period.

Alongside staff vaccination, trusts also have a role in making sure all eligible patients are vaccinated. This includes long-stay patients, patients due to be discharged into care settings and ‘making every contact count’ by taking advantage of opportunities to vaccinate patients who may not otherwise attend routine vaccination clinics.

Next steps

To support you and your teams to deliver a high impact flu vaccination programme this year:

• Our communications toolkit, materials and top tips are available on the Campaign Resource Centre with one-off registration open to all. Following feedback from trust communications colleagues, these resources can be easily customised with local information and photography.
• In collaboration with our most improved and top performing trusts, we have developed a Top tips guide [Futures – login required] to increasing uptake of staff vaccinations.
• We will be hosting a series of virtual sessions on sharing best practice for communications and operational and clinical leads. The first, on 11 September, will share learning from trusts who have achieved significant improvement in staff uptake. Please encourage your communication and operational teams to join.

Thank you in advance for your efforts to protect our patients, staff and services this winter – with sustained effort and commitment we can collectively make a real difference.

Yours sincerely,

Duncan Burton, Chief Nursing Officer for England 
Dr Amanda Doyle, National Director of Primary Care and Community Services, NHS England
Professor Meghana Pandit, National Medical Director  

Publication reference: PRN02095